Last Command of the Witheld Arc 1: Rebirth

Griffin Tucker Vasilias, Great House Scion, Reborn Lvl 3

Mount Discovery, Province of Aragonia

Griffin took a deep breath. He held the ethershard and prepared to absorb it when Kismet’s voice cut in. “Griffin, if I may make a small suggestion?”

Irritated, Griffin snapped, “Can’t it wait? I was just about to absorb this shard.”

“It’s about your preferred absorption method,” Kismet said. “Do you prefer to be in pain?”

Griffin hesitated and carefully put the shard down on the couch cushion next to him. He had been dreading the pain. The feeling of the shard slicing through his arm and then piercing into his etherheart was not one he’d been looking forward to experiencing again.

“Uh, is there an alternative?” He asked.

“You could position it right above your heart and then absorb it. It should be almost entirely painless if you do it that way.”

Griffin stared at her for a long moment before he picked the shard back up. He took off the t-shirt he was wearing and tossed it aside before he positioned the shard over his right breast. Kismet cleared her throat and pointed at the other side of his chest and Griffin coughed, quickly switching the shard to the other side. He took another deep breath to center himself, forming his anima around the shard as he sunk back into the mental space he’d imagined back in the vent.

He'd been worried that he wouldn’t be able to do that again. It had been relatively easy in the vent, but he’d been half out of his mind with pain and fear. But he didn’t need to worry. As he focused on his etherheart, the stained glass window with the multicolored lights shining on it formed in his imagination. There were only two lights missing bulbs now.

He considered which Attribute to bind the new ethershard to. If this was going to be an attack or defense graft—something he fervently hoped—then he should bind it to the Attribute that would work best with his natural talents. Or at least, that’s what he told himself. He had no idea what the Dominion or Precision Attributes did so he couldn’t exactly make an informed decision.

Still, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out at least one of the Attributes. Precision is pretty unambiguous. Maybe I should bind it to Precision so that whatever it is, at least I’ll be precise with it. But Dominion sounds like Strength from D&D so maybe I should bind it there? He frowned to himself. There’s no way of knowing for sure, so I guess it’s pretty arbitrary at this point. Still, whatever it turns out to be will be something I didn’t have before. Even if it’s a magical ability to find four-leaf clovers, it’ll at least be something new—though somehow I doubt that a Legendary ethershard of the Void would give me something so benign. Time to roll the dice I guess.

Griffin decided he’d bind it to his Precision Attribute. If it was an attack graft, he wanted to be sure he hit whatever he aimed it at and he figured binding it to Precision would help him do that the best. He focused his anima, wrapping it around the shard with the needle-sharp tip resting against his chest, and pulled it in, absorbing it like he had the others. In his mind’s eye, the bulb that he guided into the empty socket was lowered slowly but surely into place. When it lit up, it was similar to his Growth light: colorless but somehow still adding to the subtle realness of the portrait of himself in the stained glass window.

This time, the shard didn’t slice into his palm and begin burrowing its way through his flesh. Instead, as soon as he pulled the shard into himself with his anima, it sank directly into his etherheart. The only pain was a slight pinching where the incredibly sharp tip of the shard had punctured his skin. His tensa pathways were expanded once more as power surged through him and several System messages popped up in his HUD.

Before he read them, he reveled in the feeling of more tensa surging through his pathways. He’d never been conscious at this point in the process before and he was eager to experience it. The sensation of heat from his tensa pathways increased more and more until it felt like he was circulating liquid plasma through his body, though it didn’t hurt even a little bit. Instead, he felt like he could arm wrestle a giant and win or leap tall buildings in a single bound. It felt incredible.

Before he could do anything regrettable, the feeling of invincibility began to fade, though he felt no less warm from the tensa rushing through his pathways. Even though he didn’t feel like he could take on the world with one hand tied behind his back anymore, the feeling of having four of his five Attributes unlocked was truly eye-opening. It felt like he’d been looking at the world through a dirt-caked windshield only to just suddenly have it cleaned for the first time in months.

“Wow. That was intense,” he said. “But painless. Thanks for the heads up,” he said to Kismet.

He then began sorting through the System messages waiting for him. First, his newly updated Reborn profile and accompanying System messages regarding his newly unlocked Attribute.

Griffin Tucker Vasilias

Race

Human

Rank/Level

Reborn - level 4

House

House Vasilias

Racial Gifts

Great House Seal, Enhanced System Access, Unlimited Inventory, Monster Rendering, DEMI Port, Overcharge

Attributes

Dominion

?? / 20

Speed

12 [Data] /20

Precision

8 [Void] / 20

Growth

12 [Void] /20

Arcana

15 [Mind] /20

Tensa Pool

26.7 ks

Gear

Duffel Bag, Cinnamon Rolls x 34, knife, pillow x 4, soap, toothbrush, pen, notebook, 1 x [Legendary] quality ethershard of Void, 150 kg [Junk] quality cybernetic parts, 23.8 kg [Common] quality cybernetic parts, 107 kg [Rare] quality plasma cybercentipede meat

Grafts

Adaptive Conjuration [Mind], Sensor Suite [Speed], Dread Consumption [Void], Reality Twine [Void]

Attribute Unlocked!

You have unlocked your Precision Attribute at a score of [8] (+7 from Legendary ethershard, +1 from deferred Achievement-based increase Soft Stepping).

The following have been improved: hand-eye coordination, time-sense, sense of direction, proprioception, hearing, smell, vision, sense of touch, and taste.

For unlocking an Attribute for the first time, your tensa pool increases by 1 ks per Attribute. Your tensa pool is now at 26.7 kilosparks.

Once he finished reading the message, Griffin tried to feel the difference in his senses. Griffin looked around the room, opening his mind to his senses. He gasped as he began to realize the true magnitude of the changes Precision had wrought. His heartbeat sped up and he felt sweat prickle all over his body in far more detail than he had ever felt before.

Unlocking Precision had provided a lot of individual subtle sensory improvements that were hard to put his finger on but added up to far more than their parts. The one that was going to throw him for a loop was his improved sense of smell. He’d never really had a particularly strong sense of smell but unlocking his Precision Attribute made him feel like a bloodhound all of a sudden.

At least unlocking the Attribute seemed to include an increased mental capacity to process all this new sensory input. He had thought he was used to this kind of sensory fuckery from when he’d gotten the Sensor Suite graft, but he was going to need some time to digest all the changes before he did something as dangerous as trying to use dynamite to blow up his wall. After swallowing a few times and taking several deep breaths, he felt his heartbeat slow a little bit and he felt like he was ready to read the rest of his messages.

New Graft Obtained!

You absorbed a [Legendary Data Ethershard], bonding it to your Speed Attribute. Because you have not yet chosen a Class, you gain a new, random graft of [Legendary] quality. You have gained the graft [Reality Twine].

Due to the [Legendary] quality of the ethershard absorbed, your Precision Attribute has been set to 7.

“Reality Twine doesn’t sound like an attack or defense graft,” Griffin muttered as he scanned the next message. “Let’s at least see what it does.”

Reality Twine [Void] – Precision 8

Next Rank: 1 Uncommon ethershard of the Void, 1 Uncommon ethershard of Dimension

Cost: 5% initial investment; expandable (see Description)

Cooldown: None

Description: Invest a percentage of your tensa pool and create a spool of Reality Twine. Reality Twine cannot be broken unless willed by you. Reality Twine is invisible to all senses except for tensa-sensing abilities unless you will it to be visible. Reality Twine is one of the few things that can interact with a Void monster. Spend more tensa to create larger spools of Reality Twine.

Anchors. You can anchor Reality Twine to anywhere in reality by expending 100 sparks to create the anchor point. Reality Twine and any anchor points you create may be dismissed at any time.

“What in the blue fuck is this?” Griffin asked incredulously. “I got magical Superstring? For real?!” He created a pillow with his Adaptive Conjuration and threw it across the room angrily. Somehow it didn’t have the right impact, but at least it got his point across. “What the hell am I supposed to do with fucking string?!”

Kismet had read the System messages at the same time as Griffin. She didn’t press the point for the moment, she just waited for Griffin’s emotions to calm. For his part, Griffin had started pacing and shouting. He expounded on topics like fairness, the folly of the pursuit of power, the uselessness of string, and the apparent disgust the Universe in general seemed to have for him specifically. Eventually, he did wind down, flopping onto his bed face first.

Kismet just watched as Griffin lay there for a couple of minutes, waiting patiently. Griffin rolled over and sat up. He focused for a moment and conjured a bowl. With another surge of tensa, the bowl filled with Cocoa Krispies. He focused one more time and milk poured into the bowl from a point in the air just above the cereal. Grumpily, he pulled a spoon out of his Inventory and started munching on the impromptu snack. Despite his disappointment, he found himself smiling. They tasted just like the Cocoa Krispies he remembered from Earth.

So I didn’t get a laser beam or Excalibur, he thought as he ate. But I did get unlimited unbreakable string that I can attach to anything. And if I come across a Void monster, I guess I can tie it up. The more he thought about it, the more childish his angry fit seemed and he felt his cheeks heating up in a blush. He ate the rest of his cereal quietly and quickly, mind spinning with the new possibilities. I guess I’m gonna have to try to retrieve that shard that Kismet found now. After all, a deal’s a deal. Not that she’d say anything either way, I don’t think.

When he finished his cereal, he ate the bowl and the spoon as well, deciding to see what they tasted like. He found that he was able to bite into the spoon with only a little bit of difficulty, like a piece of particularly tough beef jerky. The spoon tasted sharp and almost electric while the bowl had a surprisingly smooth consistency with a dried marshmallow flavor. There was the added bonus that he didn’t have to wash the dish or store it in his Inventory, a bad habit he’d gotten into lately that he kept intending to stop if only it weren’t so damn convenient.

“Okay, I’ve grown up,” he said. “I’ve gotten over being a whiny baby about this incredible magical power. And, uh…the zombies. I guess. Not that I’m thrilled about that. It’s a long fucking trek through these creepy empty halls and that’s just to get there. But you know that.”

“I know that,” Kismet agreed. She was watching him with a very birdlike intensity, her head cocked slightly to the side. “I wouldn’t have suggested this course of action if I didn’t think that you would both survive it and gain an incredibly powerful, versatile, and above all unique defense graft.”

Griffin nodded. “Alright, alright. You’ve convinced me. Mostly. But there’s no way in hell I’m just gonna haul off and get hiking in the next few minutes. I still need to see what I can do with this Reality Twine…Oh shit, I completely forgot at the moment, but were those actually zombies? Is that what the System calls them, I mean. I guess I can do a System lookup—there’s been something I wanted to try anyway.”

He'd been recording his experiences with his Sensor Suite since he had so much storage and it didn’t cost anything. So he brought up his HUD and focused on the graft, hoping to be able to use a System query on something recorded. His HUD once again impressed him with the easy-to-use video player. The recording had location metadata attached to it and that made it easy for him to quickly find what he needed: a section of his recorded sense-memory that showed the zombies clearly.

He had yet to really get used to the sensation of playing back a recording. Since it was a sense memory, the recording was completely immersive to his senses though it was devoid of any emotional content. When he had found the section of his recorded memory where he was close enough to the zombies for him to think he could use a System query, the memory was paused to allow him to scrub through it. Griffin started the memory again with a mental command and he was suddenly back in the cold, dark basement with rotten fingers on out-stretched dead arms trying to grab him.

It was shocking in two ways: the initial fear and startlement of being plunged back into that horrifying place and the complete absence of the remembered terror from his desperate dash away from the zombies. If he didn’t know better, he would believe that he was back in the storage area, running as fast as he could. He felt the air roaring in and out of his lungs, the pounding of his feet on the hard floor. Griffin almost forgotten the whole reason he had played it back in the first place: to try to identify the monster with the System.

It was another shock to his system when he paused the recording: to him, it appeared as if his entire world suddenly stopped. The zombies no longer shuffled or ran. He couldn’t feel himself breathe or hear the echoes of his feet or the groans of the zombies. Then he took a breath and the quieter surroundings of his room came back to him, the sense-memory still frozen in time all around him. He closed his eyes, though he still felt everything around him on his skin in his sense memory of his SONAR, and he focused on the zombies, trying to call up the System entry on them.

Nothing happened for a few seconds, then a System message popped up with the monster entry for the monsters.

Chapter 2: Lissian Zombie

Enhanced System Monster Entry

Description

Once a subject of the clandestine magical weapons test known as the Light of Liss, the Lissian Zombie is a tragic byproduct of dark experimentation. Its creation, confined within the foreboding walls of the DEEP Weapons Research Facility, was never meant to roam free. Stored away in the depths of the facility's basement, this undead creature now wanders with a haunting, unnatural grace, driven by an insatiable hunger for the living. Its eyes, aglow with a sinister luminescence, reflect a malevolent intelligence as it hunts, endlessly seeking out the life force it craves.

Rarity

Rare

Class/Level

1/8

Type

Undead

Size

Medium (up to 2 m)

Special Abilities

Undead Resilience: Exhibiting a terrifying ability to endure, the Lissian Zombie regenerates from injuries that would incapacitate ordinary beings, its wounds knitting together in a grotesque display of its unnatural vitality.

Prey Sensing: Endowed with a dreadful gift by its creators, this zombie can detect the presence of living creatures nearby, guiding its movements with a predatory precision that belies its decaying form.

Speed Boost: In its relentless pursuit of flesh, the Lissian Zombie can momentarily surge with a burst of unholy speed, a horrifying spectacle for those unfortunate enough to witness its charge.

Defenses

Damage Resistance: The creature's decayed form shows a surprising resilience to non-magical attacks, particularly those aiming to slash or pierce its rotting flesh.

Immunity to Poison and Disease: The alchemical and magical processes that gave rise to the Lissian Zombie render it impervious to poisons and diseases, a mockery of the life it once possessed.

Attacks

Bite – Piercing Damage: With jaws that can crush bone, the zombie's bite not only maims but also risks transmitting the horrific contagion that animates its own form.

Slam – Blunt Damage: The Lissian Zombie can lash out with devastating force, capable of hurling its victims aside or smashing them to the ground with a thunderous impact.

Rend – Slashing Damage: Its fingers, twisted into claw-like appendages, are weapons in their own right, designed to tear apart flesh and armor alike, leaving grievous, bleeding wounds in their wake.

Griffin whistled as he examined the monster entry for the zombie. It was powerful indeed. The monster had been listed as level 8 and that seemed quite high to Griffin. Either way, it reinforced his desire to never get anywhere near combat with one of them, let alone two thousand of the ravenous beasts. He would need to consider his plan to get the shard very carefully if he wanted to walk out of it unharmed and unzombified by the end of it.